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By Margrit Pittman

p PRAGUE
Tague is a feast for the eyes. You look
down from the thousand year old Hradcany

 —the fortified castle whose construction

Was begun around 850 A.D.—to see the
Toofs and steeples, towers and belfreys and
the bridges spanning the Vitava (sic) river.

_ Walk down Neruda Street which leads
Steeply from the Hradcany to Mala Strana,
the-Lesser Town, nestled at the foot of the

hill. Neruda street is named for the Czech

Poet Jan Neruda (from whom Pablo Neru-
da took his pen name) who lived here, in
the house of the Three Black Eagles and the
house of the Two Suns, from 1859-69. Neru-

, Jan that is, is revered for his contribu-

tion to the establishment of a Czech nation- ,

al literature, which had to assert itself
against the Hapsburg domination and its
Imposition of an alien culture.

Nearly every house here has a sign on

_ its facade, indicating either the owner’s

name, his trade or simply his artistic or re-
ligious inclination. :

Cross Charles bridge with its 30 monu-
ments and you come to Old Town Square,
Surrounded by renaissance, baroque and ro-
Cocco houses. This square was the site of
the 1621 execution of 27 leaders of the Hus-
Site movement, a people’s uprising against
Vatican and Hapsburg domination.

This city, which for 2,000 years has been

4 Cross-road of migrations and east-west
trade, has nearly every architectural style
Current in Europe since the Roman empire.
In fact, under many of the streets, roman-

-€sque buildings have been found, and the

new subway now being built will have a Ro-
Man cellar incorporated into one of its sta-
tion vestibules. You:walk by historic build-
Ings swathed in scaffolding only to see
them emerge one day in mint condition,
faithful reconstructions of the originals. All
this historic splendor—obviously in need of
Many extensive and expensive repairs —
and, on the other hand, the still urgent need
for new housing raises the question of how
a socialist government combines it re-
Sponsibility to its heritage with that of the
immediate needs of the population.

Information about this came from Di-
Tector Pavel Lang of the Board of Prague
Construction Management, whose offices
are in an ugly turn-of-the-century building
a section of town that grew during the in-
dustrial upsurge.

Le office is not merely concerned
with balance between construction and re-
Construction but also with the urban prob-

-lems that beset every modern city, such as

€nvironment, traffic, placement of indus-

try, urban renewal. The construction office ,

lives in the year 2,000. At least its plans and
Projections are geared a quarter century
ahead by decision of the Communist Party
and the government. The basic tenet of this
Plan is to strengthen the workingclass char-

acter of the city, without appreciably in- |

creasing its population, and at the same
time to improve its environment.
Part and parcel of all the planning is the

_ fact that, in‘1971, the entire historic core of

‘ague was proclaimed a landmark, and
therefore no building or alteration can be
undertaken in that part of the city without
approval of the State Institute for Recon-
Struction of Historic Towns and Monu-
ments. The complexity of these tasks does
Not seem to dampen Lang’s zest. He enthu-
Siastically unrolls maps and charts while
he reels off figures and talks of difficul-
ties that must be overcome to bridge the
demands of history, and of the present, in
order to make Prague the socialist city of
tomorrow. pte

Let me say at the outset, Lang’s office

- does not seem to share the lament of city

Planners and urbanists in the United States.
He did not mention funds, and when asked
if greater investments might be needed for
reconstruction of historic sites, he said that
Money was not the problem, but the labor
Shortage was. And this he indicated in sev-
€ral instances.

WORLD MAGAZINE

ee

Town, Prague, with haphazard roofs.

Model for reconstruction of workers’ quarters.

arles Bridge, across the Vitava River.

Prague in transformation

The Prague 2000 plan is not for great
population growth. At.present the city has
slightly over one million inhabitants; 1,-
150,000 are projected for 1990, with an even-
tual increase to no more than 1,200,000. The
emphasis is on a younger population base,
and that means housing and attractive liv-
ing conditions for young families. In the
current five-year plan, 40,000 new flats
‘were built in Prague and in the 1976-80 pe-
riod 58,000 are projected. It also means liv-
ing quarters with easy access to jobs to
avoid long travel, and that is not always the

- ease now. It means a gradual shift from
heavy industry to labor intensive, “clean
industries,’’ from heavy machinery and lo-
comotives to electronics and computers. ~

Transportation is a big problem in
Prague. Traffic tends to go through the city
center which has caused considerable con-
gestion and pollution. The subways’ first
section was opened last May. Then there
are three traffic rings around Prague

which Lang carefully explains. They will .

rout traffic around the city center at vari-

- ous distances. But they, as well as the main .

arteries, will necessitate isolation of thor-
oughfares from residential neighborhoods,
preferably by green strips, to limit noise
and air pollution.

Air pollution is a big problem. While lig-
nite is still 83% of the city’s heating fuel,

Lang says that heating will be obtained
from gas in the near future, the gas coming
via pipeline from the Soviet Union. And
somewhere in the future he sees thermo-
nuclear power for heating. :

One thing that has already been done to
reduce noise pollution is shifting the ap-
proach to the airport. Planes are now
forced to detour the city before landing.

Then there is a project Lang dwells on
lovingly. The reconstruction of those sec-
tions of the city that were built as work-
ers’ dwellings around the turn of the cen-
tury. He says:

Tes were built witho:t regard to com-
fort or health requirements. We are not
tearing these buildings down. Wve are reha-
bilitating them. We build larger apart-

‘ments with modern comfort and still keep

the neighborhood intact. People like that.
Most of the present residents want to move
into.the reconstructed houses but that is not
possible. We decrease the population den-
sity in these areas by 10 to 30%. So, many
people have to move to new apartments
outside the area but those who stay will
have good apartments and the same type
of social services we build into the new
neighborhoods,

In all new neighborhoods, schools, pre-

school institutions, restaurants and shops

are built along with the housing.
Pressed about problems, Lang reiter-
ates that there is no envidious struggle be-

tween restoration and new construction.
‘“‘We could proceed faster with the re-
storation if we could get more labor. Re-
construction of the historic sites is a very
skilled job, and we have so much work of
this kind in our country that it is difficult to
get the labor. But people are very proud of
their history and they don’t begrudge funds

spent on maintenance of its monuments.
. Still there are problems aplenty. ‘We

‘must work at enforcing the laws on nature

conservation,’’ he says. ‘‘We have laws to
minimize destruction of the environment
when building is going on, but we do find
them hard to enforce sometimes.”’

One such law is that no tree can be cut
down without a permit, and even when the
permit is granted a payment has to be
made when agricultural land is used for
building sites. But this is hard to enforce.

' Builders often take the easy way out in-

stead of helping to protect the environ-
ment.

Despite the formidable tasks, Lang is
optimistic. Transformation of a city like
Prague is not an easy matter, but the plans
and the determination of the government
to have them realized make it possible.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 1975—Page 9